A trip to the United States isn't as easy as flying down to Cancun or traveling to Europe. When visas are hard or impossible to obtain, immigrants will find other means to battle for survival and for a better future.
Hardships across the border
The first "border crossing" story in my family comes from my father and two uncles, who entered the United States through the Mexican border. First, my father and uncles had to hire a "good" coyote, a person who makes a living by transporting illegal immigrants into the United States It costs a lot of money to hire a good coyote -- about $1,000 then, and now $10,000. For a resident of a Latin American country, this is not an easy sum to obtain; my father made $5,000 in a year. To come up with the money, he sold his belongings and borrowed money from relatives and banks in Bolivia.
Having paid the coyote, they set off. My uncle Oscar recounted the journey: "During the night, we went through tunnels, ran without stopping, swam through a river and climbed fences. There was a point while we were in the desert where I could not make it. I just could not move my legs anymore. I will never forget what your father did for me. He picked me up, put me on his back and continued running."
The coyotes will often leave people and continue guiding the rest of the group. In Oscar's case, the coyote wanted to leave him, but my father picked him up and ran with him on his back. Once in the United States, life was not easy, but they continued to work to send money back home to our family.
Sadly, others' stories do not end as well.
My uncle Jose remembers running in the desert with a particular group of people, including a lady with her baby. The baby cried continuously and would not stop. So the coyote told the lady that if she did not leave the baby there in the desert, then she would have to stay behind because it was a risk for the larger group. In a state of panic, the woman left her baby. No one knows what happened to the baby. My uncle still has restless nights because of the fact that he did not oppose leaving the baby behind and did not offer to carry the baby himself. With family and unity so important in our lives, I imagine the mother and the incredible sadness she must have faced afterwards and possibly to this day.
I also came through the border my first time to the United States when I was six years old. My mom says that they had to pay extra money to have a white couple take us in their trunk. My brother and I were intoxicated and put to sleep so that we would not make any noise. My mom had to run across the border and meet us at a designated place that the coyote had set up. She said that when she saw us, we could hardly walk. She screamed at the coyote, saying, "What did you do to my children?" Once in the United States, we experienced segregation and discrimination in our new community, even from our own cousins.
Now that we are citizens of the United States, it is hard for me to see clips of others who, just like us, are trying to come to the place of opportunity for their families. To see them mistreated and beat up by border police makes me feel unsafe to even write my story. Univision and Telemundo are two Spanish channels shown in the United States that have news around 6:30 p.m. I remember I saw a clip of illegal immigrants getting off a truck and being frantically beaten by the border police. I could not eat my dinner. What happened to human rights? How can the world's "promoter of human rights" treat human beings as though they are animals?
A mother's sacrifice
So much of my early life is a blur. I sometimes wonder why I have blocked out some of these memories. In hopes of understanding my past, I asked my mom to tell me of our early struggles.
I come from a family that is neither among the rich nor the poor. Before we left for the United States, my mother was going through a divorce with my biological father, had two children and had just finished medical school at La Universidad San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
She set up her clinic in the countryside -- where she had the only clinic within a five-mile radius. She felt needed in the community because the residents were not obtaining immediate medical care for serious injuries. She obviously did not do her work for the money because most residents could only pay with eggs, chickens or personal possessions.
My mom was about to begin studying for her specialty as a pediatrician, when she made a life-changing choice to come to the United States. She chose to leave a community where she was needed and was making a positive difference to face a situation in the United States where she struggled to simply survive. She chose this difficult reality for the sake of my brother and me, so that her children could have a better future.
Many parents come to the unknown with a selfless wish for their children to have better lives than they have had and, as a result, are forced to put their own dreams behind them. As a single mother, this was exactly what my mom did. Dr. Mabel Cespedes in Bolivia, she left behind her position of power and prestige for a very different life. Since the time she entered the United States, she has never again enjoyed the rights or privileges of her education, or been referred to with the title of respect conferred to a doctor. Instead, she has been categorized and labeled as immigrant, alien and uneducated because of the work she was forced to accept.
When we first arrived in the United States, my mom cleaned hotels from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Then she would work from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. taking care of an elderly couple. My brother, who was in kindergarten, would walk to school by himself because my mom was at work. I was two years younger than my brother and did not have a place to stay, so I would go with my mom to clean hotels. I would hide so that the managers would not see me helping my mom
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